No, not really. Cells can express a lot of different proteins that are innately antiviral, but that doesn't mean that the cell still can't be infected. Infection of Langerhans and other classes of dendritic cells by HIV is a well established fact. Not to mention that on immune activation Langerhans cells become mature dendritic cells and stop expressing Langerin.

The foreskin is known to be highly enriched for the types of peripheral immune cells that carry the specific receptors used by HIV for entry into the cell, such as Langerhans cells and macrophages, while the rest of the penis is not. So by removing the foreskin you are limiting exposure to the specific cell types that HIV can infect.

You're quoting the American Academy of Pediatrics report published in 1999, not the one from this year. There has been a lot of research published on this since then.

Do you really think that's a reasonable standard? Even OpenBSD has had security flaws in it.

There have been 3 separate instances in the last 10 years where BSL3 pathogens have escaped from a lab and infected people, including one in Beijing where a small local outbreak occurred and one person died of SARS. My biggest concern isn't so much the publication of the knowledge, but rather that this pathogen is actually not being kept at a USAMRIID-like facility, but a BSL3 at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

No, really it's not stupid. In fact there was an article in Nature this week written by several experts in the field that basically argued the same point. They estimated the likelihood of accidental release through lab-acquired infection is around 30% within four years, based on recent rates of lab-acquired infections. Keep in mind that one of the biggest concerns is that this modified pathogen is *NOT* being stored in a USAMRID-grade BSL4 lab, but rather a BSL3 facility. Do a google search for laboratory-acquired SARS (also a BSL3 agent) for a wake up call. Release of a highly transmissible pathogen with 50% mortality would be a catastrophe unlike anything we've ever experienced.

Yeah, this problem really sank in with us when we realize it was faster to download the data onto 2TB external drives and ship it to collaborators rather than transmit it over the internet (even with Aspera). Seemed so bizarre to be surrounded by all this high tech equipment and yet we're putting stamps on our data so we can give it to the mailman.

Sure we do. Write the manual in C instead of English.

Pathogenity requires extensive adaptive mechanisms from a microbe, otherwise it isn't able to live in an organism with an immune system. Microbes that cause human illnesses have through countless generations developed traits that enable them to grip molecules on human cells, thrive in tissues, and resist the immune cells' attempts to destroy them.

I don't know if I really agree with that. Some of the more dangerous pathogens are those that have recently jumped from other species and have had little time to evolve into coexistence with their new host. SIV infections are symptomless in their natural host, but deadly in related primate species (including HIV in humans). Same thing with herpesviruses, relatively minor symptoms in their natural host, but often deadly when they make a zoonotic jump (herpes B amd AlHV are good examples). Plus 120,000 years ago is not very long at all on an evolutionary time scale and it could have easily been exposed to other primates/mammals (even humans) at that time. In fact the age of it really only guarantees that a human host would have zero protective immunity against it, so it would be like smallpox blowing through native American populations.

Does Vista do everything openBSD does? I don't seem to remember anything in the release notes about Vista shipping with a SSH or Web server. Hell does windows even ship with an SSH client yet?

Christ, you think that private corporations are any better? There have been so many data breach/loss incidents lately that they don't even make the news anymore.

rm -rf juryduty

It's both right and wrong.

Yes, yes, but what is it if I look inside the box?

I question whether that is really true. I've seen a few articles that would lead me to believe that the US isn't alone. In fact, I saw a recent survey in the UK where about about half of people interviewed felt that alternatives to evolution should be taught in the classroom (including 30% of teachers):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/nov/07/creationism-intelligent-design-religion

We had our proximity card access system completely shit the bed on the 31st. Don't know if it was a leap year issue or if it was just coincidence, but it caused widespread outages and was a major PITA.